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Showing posts from July, 2018

Won't you celebrate with me, a poem by Lucille Clifton

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won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed. Lucille Clifton

Christmas on the farm, a poem by Frank Fisch

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At 4 a.m. the barn lights go on, and we feed the cows with a slight sense of urgency. It's a holiday morning and we're trying to get done, but even on Christmas, you still have to milk the cows. We start tractors, barn cleaners and manure spreaders up, praying that nothing breaks down. And then cow by cow, the milking machines slowly leap frog their way down the barn. (you can't speed up a one speed machine) Finally, with the morning chores done we head for the house, shake off the cold, get cleaned up, and change our clothes. The guests arrive, the wrapping paper flies, then it's time for our holiday dinner. In the afterglow of Kris Kringle, while everyone else begins to mix and mingle, my best present is a 20 minute nap in the recliner. Then the clock tells us, "get back to the barn." But on this afternoon family and friends tag along. Hot coffee and adult beverages flow, as do the stories and laughter. The cows get milked and the bull starts to fly. And whe

Drowning, a poem by Tsebo Makakole

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Scared and frustrated, Ke t�ohile batsoali, What are they going to say, When I tell them? My wallet all wet, Containing my money And my bank account cards. My Canon camera�s Lens is blurry, My Motorola leaking ink From the inside. Ke tlo kopa thuso joang, Coz I am drowning Like a dying cat. My lip balm filled with water And my smart watch not working, Manaka a eona a eme tsi! Joalo ka pelo e sa pompeng mali. Metsi. Metsi. Metsi. When I thought of my drawings, I wanted to cry, Coz those were the best Pictures I had. Ha ke nahana ho qala qalong Mosebetsi o tloba mongata. Then I cried joalo ka lesea Straight after birth. Ahhhhhhh! Tsebo Makakole is a 17-year-old high-school student from Morija, Lesotho. He enjoys photography, filmmaking, hip-hop, soccer and writing poems and stories. He plans to pursue these interests and to become a professional, multi-disciplinary artist. Tsebo Makakole

Conversations with African Poets and Writers (Episode 5)

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I looked at the boy, and wondered

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whom he looked up to, if there were poets in his head who stirred him, people who sculpt morning out of night to make life sufferable, individuals who scrap memories of strife. That�s what I asked him. It was a deliberate question, for he had to know about the origin of beauty the way a priest knows the face of God, a star the sound of a nameless world that spins like a top in a vacuum as it floats by, a star bright in its capacity to light the dark. Beauty in forms of colour, summer ushered in by swallows darting, each trailing the ribbon of its tail behind. I said to him: everything is in a poet�s nib, you know� the love everyone dreams of at night when rain won�t wane, magic that makes what�s under a child�s bed disappear with morning, a morning that is sometimes grave with concern when the sound of no one breathing comes from an adjoining room. He looked up at me, making me wonder again whom he looked up to. That year blossoms invaded summer branches, reflected in a poem I read one

Eyes of my people, a poem by Rethabile Masilo

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Sometimes, even after the sun has gone and street music has tired the town and stirred all the people, and there are dancers still from neighbouring villages laughing and draining their beers, I do not leave my room, a world beyond walls of words, the reason I hear darkness only when I close my eyes to pray. As a Sotho child, when it is time I must study shadows that come down the hillside like flowing blood, before making the decision to go back to my people, to the eyes of them who have been studying the world to bring it a revolution of peace, change it, according to the needs of all of us, dream everything up and then build it for generations to come, kneading its soft clay of love with hands of nature. The family at Peka, circa 1966. Khotsofalang is in the red sweater with black arms. I'm the good-looking dude in the middle.

Sorrow, a poem by Rethabile Masilo

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You should never put words in sorrow's mouth but must acknowledge the ones already there, when it tells a street the secret of how far home is, the only certainty being fear, whose name and blood type are part of its life. Like when a cripple drags itself from a crowd, whispering sentences of broken limbs. Sorrow knows that. It has travelled the road to Emmaus; it is the dinghy drowning at the bottom of a sea, the Aegean, the Mediterranean; it has sailed into the devil�s face and looked back, unwilling to return. But it knows words, the feel of a heart in the mouth, when you have nowhere to go and have to still yourself against the words and worlds of others, the sorrow of midnight when a hospital bulb is your only light. Khotsofalang

Stripe, a poem by Rethabile Masilo

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For anthony, bob, claude, claudia, dennis, edward, geoffrey, kei, kwame, linton, lorna, malachi, marcus, mervyn, mutabaruka, olive, opal, pamela, peter, velma, winston�with appreciation. One day the stripe approached me, speaking creole, a scar scrawled across its face like the pain of a cotton field, on this island anchored by the weight of lives. We spoke with eyes, voices, song, too, and a sense of mirth, mirth that� colourful as we are, ate by razorblades of cane leaves, the dark of our parents' skins brought rage here from Africa in hurricane and storm boats, which makes us even�even though the sun is yellow again and this tavern at the edge of our overhanging coastline smiles at the world, the old as well as the new, the weighty, the light, the forgotten dead; though Bolt be running wild. Who knew we would meet among trees this island planted tight, its mangroves relaxing in the village shade like Africans at a gathering in Africa? Ziggy is not as tall as his dad, but the voc

The martyr, a poem by Rethabile Masilo

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Throughout winter we looked forward to spring, and planned how we would enjoy it once it finally came round, till those men slaughtered the boy, which set us back more than a season, at least. They took what they could from what remained of his heart and split�just like that� though not before they had lifted their leg on the way out, and pissed like a dog on the inner walls of his heart, in both the atria and the ventricles, and stopped one eventual time at the door to spit on his ancestral name. �This poem is from Letter to country , Canopic Publishing , 2016 Motlatsi and mom in Qoaling in 1981